AI Gets the Best Starts!

[ajsciri4]

Spoiler :

I know it isn't very fair of me to say this since I've never re-rolled my start, but I NEVER get starts like these. Stupid AI gets too lucky all of the time

I know I didn't highlight every food or wealth resources, just the significant ones... And there's still a lot of them...

 

[strijder20]

Uhm.. what exactly is the matter? That seems like a good start, yes, but nothing outraging. How many games have you played?
And highlighting whales isn't going to prove your point.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

If we would have created new threads for every randomly generated bonus the AI gets, the forum would be overflowing right now

 

[Akbarthegreat]

OK, I got it.

Look at iStartingLocPercent. That is the chance that the AI gets a start better than yours. For example:10% on settler whereas 50% on prince.

The starting positions are not purposely nerfed, BUT the Map Generator produces more less valuable starting positions on Deity than on Settler, how is that?
The Map Generator will generate all starting positions for all players before placing the individual player. When it places a player it does so pretty much randomly over the still available starting positions (this is not perfectly true for some scripts but we'll disregard this here ). Now when it places the human player it looks at the difficulty and on settler it will only accept the first starting position it rolls if it is within the top 10% of starting positions available, if not it goes on to the next and so on. On Deity it will accept any starting position that is in the top 90% of starting positions - now this does not mean that very good starting positions are impossible, since it will accept the best starting position if it randomly assigns that to the player, but it will not seek for the best as on settler.

Reference from Ori

 

[ajsciri4]

Understood, thanks for that. But I haven't played a lot; maybe 20-25 games on days where I have time between tennis training and winter soccer practice. I thought whales were luxury, sorry.
I just didn't realize how much an advantage the AI could get in a start since mine are always mediocre.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

I thought whales were luxury, sorry.

Whales ARE luxury resources.

 

[nfw]

On the other hand that island is pretty crowded, and having 3 capital city sites is going to inflate the value of the land quite a bit.

 

[lymond]

OP - whales are pretty much irrelevant. They do not help with your starts, which is the most important thing. The most important resources are FOOD and then strats. You have those then you win.

 

[Um the Muse]

Whales wouldn't be so bad if you could get them very early, but they're available so late. They are also one of very few resources that obsolete (furs and ivory also obsolete, in case you're wondering).

In regards to the Map Generator, I've got to say that this makes a lot of sense. It's kind of rare to see a bad AI capitol. The exception seems to be coastal starts where they have too much food and nothing else.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Of course, capitol strength is only a part of the equation, and the game's spawn location algorithm is completely borked otherwise so even a "good" start could be a trap...for both humans AND AI.

Also keep in mind that on standard maps there are six times as many AI as there are humans, and thus the chances of at least 1-2 having better starts are pretty high unless the player start is stellar.